Good on ya, mate! United Airlines rescues failed New Zealand flight all by itself

There’s been an interesting question raised by an earlier post about Southwest Airlines’ lost-and-found luggage debacle. What role, if any, did yours truly play in retrieving the passenger’s bag?

The answer is: None whatsoever. And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

To explain, let me tell you another story. This one is about Barbara Takahashi, who recently flew from Auckland to San Francisco on Air New Zealand and United Airlines.

Here’s what happened to her:

In LA, we had to change terminals and were not able to use the electronic check-in machines to get our boarding passes.

There were so few United agents available to assist with boarding passes that we had to wait an hour and a half in line and could not get to our flight on time. Nearly every person in our long line missed their connection. There were no alternate flights available that day as it was the last day of a holiday period.

We were given standby tickets and told to wait. After our first try at standby, it was clear that there was no way a group of four people would be able to get seats on one of the many oversold flights. The only option we were given was to wait all day for a flight and then, if that failed, try to get a flight the next day.

Because Takahashi was traveling with three children, waiting until the next day wasn’t an option. So she bought tickets to San Jose, Calif., on Southwest.

I would be much more understanding if there had been weather or mechanical issues, but this was a case of being sold defective merchandise. Our flights were not late. There was simply no possible way to use the tickets as sold.

She asked Air New Zealand why she couldn’t make her connection. It responded by punting to United.

While you were travelling under an Air New Zealand flight number, your flight between Los Angeles and San Francisco was a code share flight, with UA being the operating airline. As such, any boarding passes would have been issued or permitted to be issued by UA system. When you checked in Auckland, it appears that UA did not allow our system to issue your boarding passes as yet which is beyond the control of Air New Zealand.

There’s a much bigger issue here involving “legal” connection times and the reservation system used by airlines. But for the purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on Takahashi’s next move, which was to contact me. She wrote me a note, asking what to do next.

Now, there are some of you out there who believe I should have immediately contacted United on her behalf and asked it to look into this. Isn’t that what an ombudsman does?

Actually, no.

It’s important that the airline has a chance to review Takahashi’s complaint and respond. So I suggested that she take the matter up with United and provided her with a few names.

She did, and just yesterday, I heard back from her.

I can’t believe it. I got a call at home yesterday saying that they had received my information and would look into some sort of refund. Frankly, I was just happy to get a call. This morning, I got a message that they were refunding $1,120 to our account. That is over twice the amount that I requested. I truly would have been happy with a sincere apology, but this is amazing. United is back in my good graces!

I agree.

My point? The system sometimes works. It did for Takahashi.

You don’t always need a reader advocate to hold your hand when things go wrong. And that’s the point of this blog: to offer tips on how to work within the system and get the results you deserve.

If you read my syndicated column, The Travel Troubleshooter, you’ll see plenty of examples of the system not working. Thank goodness, those are few and far between.

  • Dan

    Chris, you might not have steped in directly in the Southwest case, but I am 100% certain that, without the popularity of your blog, and the exposure that the story received, there is no way Southwest would have found that bag so quickly, since they were set on their ways that the couple never checked the bag.

  • http://www.twc.ca/mp3 Stephen Pickford

    Good to see United step up to the plate. Over the years, I have found John Tague to be quite helpful and a professional in every sense of the word. The bigger question here, though, is how NZ was so quick to pass the buck. They sold the ticket, the contract was under their name (i.e. ticket would have indicated “issued by Air New Zealand”), and they chose to code-share with UA. IF this case had ever gone to Small Claims Court, the fact that the contract was in NZ’s name, and the flight was sold as being NZ, would have found NZ guilty and ordered to pay up….they are responsible for the performance of their sub-contractors. NZ should thank UA profusely for saving their proverbial McMullen.

  • Chicky

    Glad to see United did the right thing. But I do have to agree with Dan about your column, Chris. I’m satisfied SWA never would have found that bag had the story not appeared in your blog. Maybe you didn’t personally negotiate a resolution, but your willingness to allow the story to be told in a public forum no doubt helped get a resolution.

  • John

    I’m surprised she couldn’t get boarding passes all the way to SFO from NZ. I recently flew three flights on two different Star Alliance airlines (Thai and Asiana) to travel from Phuket to Seattle, and I’m fairly sure we were issued all three boarding passes at Phuket without a problem.

  • Cathie

    This happens a lot more than people realize. When flying DSM-DTR-AMS-VCE all boarding passes were issued at DSM. When returning VCE-AMS-MSP-DSM only the first boarding pass was issued. When we arrived at the gate in AMS we had a tough time getting through the security screening because we had no boarding passes. They did finally accept our printed itineraries and let us through the screening process. When we arrived at the gate check in desk our boarding passes were waiting for us. Ultimately we had no problem with connection and boarding but I was concerned until we boarded what would happen.

  • Carver

    @Chris

    I’m with the others. I believe that the popularity of your blog and your standing in the travel community caught the attention of the relevant people at Southwest. After month(s) of being unable to locate the bag, it’s located within hours of the story’s publication. Coincidence? I think not.

  • Jennifer (the other one)

    Regarding the customer’s complaint: If every United passenger checking in was affected, and many were forced to miss their flight, were the planes taking off half-empty? Why didn’t they hold the flight(s) involved? A few 1-hour delays would have been more convenient and probably cheaper than refunding all those fares.